Oscilloscope Laboratories To Release DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of Director Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline On Jan. 15

Oscilloscope Laboratories will be launching its 2019 DVD and Blu-ray release campaign on Jan. 15 with the debut of director Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline.

The Berlin International Film Festival in February of 2014 and filmmaker Josephine Decker was on a “cinematic high” with not one, but two films being presented.    Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely were screened within a 24-hour period, audiences were delighted and critics were thrilled and for a brief moment she basked in the glow of the accolades.   

And then came that moment, “what next?”   It would be a four-year filmmaking journey that brought Josephine Decker to the Sundance Film Festival in January of this year and the debut of Madeline’s Madeline and the answer to “what next.”   

By all accounts — critics, audiences and the number of festival awards that piled up during its globe-trotting rollout — Decker has delivered the next the next Winter’s Bone; a star-making (Jennifer Lawrence) indie film that went all the way to a Best Picture nomination in 2010.

It’s too early to tell if newcomer Helena Howard is a future star, but she absolutely nails it as Madeline, a biracial teen with emotional problems boarding on mental health issues.   So solid is her performance that Oscilloscope Laboratories has qualified the film for Oscar consideration with a limited mid-August theatrical run (just 31 screens at the max just prior to the Labor Day weekend).

For the record, the ARR for Madeline’s Madeline is 158 days and box office receipts generated during the film’s limited arthouse run were an impressive $185,576.

Madeline, seventeen, in high school, unstable and unsure … and is in constant conflict with her mother, Regina (played by writer, director and actress Miranda July — Cannes Film Festival winner for her 2005 film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which, by the way, co-starred Winter’s Bone’s John Hawkes), who is white, with her black father nowhere in the picture.    Her mental state drifts between fantasy and reality in these conflicts.

She does find solace in her high school acting class run by a woman by the name of Evangeline (Molly Parker — House of Cards, Deadwood, Goliath), who is desperate for something original in the way of a new stage production.   What she hits upon is a work of fiction drawn from real-life experiences, which puts Madeline in the lead, playing a character based upon herself.

By any standard that is a recipe for danger.  An unstable young woman, who is already suffering from periods of dissociation, being thrust into a situation that can only magnify her swings … swings that play out with violence.   Helena Howard’s Madeline has to balance two worlds — both very real to her — and sort out what is fantasy and what is reality … it is a stunning performance to watch, savor and take in.

Both nuggets being served up by Oscilloscope include the extensive video session with filmmaker Josephine Decker titled “Improvising A New Cinema,” deleted scenes and a combo featurette, “Rehearsal Process/Behind The Scenes Footage.”